いらっしゃいませ！

Monday, April 6, 2009

Day 5 - Lost in Ikebukuro, Cherry Blossom Rain, and a Gyoza Stadium

I woke up this morning with a craving for something spicy. Something hot to get my blood flowing and my forehead sweating. So that's when I decided to go try Mouko Tan Men Nakamoto--a Mongolian ramen-ya guaranteed to make you cry! The Ikebukuro branch is about 5 minutes from the JR line. The directions are slightly complicated so try to find the best route from this map.

I ordered the shop's namesake ramen, Mouko Tan Men, which is 3 out of 5 flames on their spicy scale. It's basically a Mabo Sauce in a base of miso with plenty of vegetables. After 10 minutes my sweat and tears started adding to the soup. Of course I'm kidding, but I can't imagine what 5 flames is like because I thought 3 was prettty darn hot. It was good, but not something I could eat everyday. It did a hell of a job satisfying my craving.

Since I was already in Ikebukuro, I decided to search for the gyoza stadium. I only vaguely remembered its general location from a map I saw the other day, so let's just say that that map was worthless. I ended up walking around for about an hour and I won't admit it if you ask me, but yes...I was lost. Being lost in Ikebukuro is not necessarily a bad thing. Not only were the beautiful Sakura petals raining down on me, but Ikebukuro is one of the best ramen towns in Tokyo.

When I finally found the gyoza stadium, there was just too much to comprehend. How can you possibly choose which gyoza shop to eat at. They all looked so good! I finally ended up trying one of them and as you'll see in the slideshow, it almost made me lose my appetite. It didn't matter. I was too full anyway.

I leave for Hokkaido in the early morning so I'll need to get some rest. And I still need to pack. Uh-oh. Anyway, my next post will come from Kushiro so wish me luck! See you in Hokkaido!

8 comments:

doh too bad you had a bad experience at the gyoza stadium! the one shop i remembered that was pretty great was called 'ten-ko-gyoza-bou'. it's probably been rotated out already... unlike ramen, i think gyoza is one of those foods where there isn't a vast difference in quality between the japanese and chinese versions. the stuff you find in tokyo is essentially the stuff you can get in monterey park lol. although there are a few places here and there...

It was worth the trip to go check it out. If I were hungrier I probably could have sampled some more. I did take some frozen ones home and I ate them last night. I forget which shops they were from but they were really good.